Waterfront Commission postpones hearings again

The Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor said it has further postponed the start of a public hearing about adding longshore workers in the Port of New York and New Jersey. A hearing scheduled for Nov. 25 has been postponed until a yet-to-be-named date in December.
The International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), the union that represents dockworkers, and the New York Shipping Association (NYSA), which represents their employers, made a request in September to add 532 longshore employees and 150 checker/clerks to the port to alleviate labor shortages and to replace 300 longshoremen who are expected to retire early next year. In a new contract signed earlier this year, the ILA and NYSA offered incentives for some older ILA members to retire.
ILA and NYSA have since complained about what they see as "the slow-moving bureaucratic pace" of the Waterfront Commission in deciding whether to expand the number of workers in the port.
Representatives from the NYSA, Waterfront Commission, and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have held several meetings to discuss port hiring but have so far declined to say little about those meetings other than to say "continued progress" in those discussions.